Hurricane Sandy and the recent nor’easter hitting the East Coast have gotten many of us thinking about the looming threat of climate change. Artist Diana Thater’s Chernobyl at David Zwirner gallery reflects on a manmade catastrophe from the recent past.

New York icons shining through the flood waters and blackouts.

Thomas Hirschhorn takes us into a sinking cruise ship.

Apparently this is what happens when amateur art restoration gets out of hand. On the left, the original fresco by 19th-century painter Elías García Martínez; on the right, how it looked after an elderly Spanish woman tried her hand at restoring it.